[Openal] openal future

[Jason Daly]

Sven Panne wrote:
> After that, the card works, but only in a very, very basic way. I see only a 
> few inputs and only stereo output, the front module is not working at all, 
> etc. Are there any hints to make the card more functional under Linux? Even my 
> crappy onboard chip works in 5.1 mode out-of-the box... :-(
>   

Hi, Sven,  It's been a while!

It worked right out of the gate on FC10 for me.  It also installed way, 
way easier than the previous two releases.  Maybe I'm in better shape 
because I have an original X-Fi Platinum.  I have to admit that I 
haven't had time to check whether I can get multi-channel audio or not.  
I actually haven't used my home machine much lately.

What's really interesting to me is how the driver has been received by 
the open source community.  After all of the whining and complaining 
that the open source driver community has done in the past about binary 
blob drivers, Creative has finally released a fully open source driver 
for the X-Fi (maybe it's not feature-complete, but the source is all 
there for people to hack on, and data sheets have been released to the 
community as well).  This happened in November, so it's been six months.

I find it really confusing that the driver still hasn't made it into the 
ALSA project (not even a whisper about it on the lists).  Even if it's 
not ready for the newer hardware, it could at least be put into the 
repository.  I've also heard that the OSS driver is not functioning that 
well for many people, and this driver came out even earlier.  After all 
of the complaints and assurances that if the driver were open-sourced, 
it would be better, it seems to be going nowhere. 

I acknowledge that there could be a legitimate issue that's holding up 
development, but I haven't been able to find any discussions about this 
on any lists or forums.  If anyone is in the know about this, can you 
explain what's going on?

--"J"